Driving through Malibu, my heart opened up as I saw the seaside and the ocean air took my breath and I opened my lungs and released some of my fear.

I have the car rental packed securely with my art and I am ready to drive up the coast of California to the North beyond Marin alone. As I sit behind the wheel, I am sitting in fear. I am driving to Fort Bragg to deliver my art and myself to have my one-man show called “A Sacred Artist in Modern Times.” This is my sustainable art, spoken word with custom beats, sometimes a band with live music travelling show.

My first show was at Seven Degrees in Laguna Beach with Love Chutney playing live music and myself performing spoken word over the beats of Mike Ellis. The second show was three venues at the Sawdust Festival celebrating its 50th year. This will be my third venue of performances. It has been three years since I have been to Fort Braggs to visit my old friend and gallery owner. This is an opportunity to expand as an artist, a business person and a human soul. It is time to come out of the womb. It is time to be my dream. I am doing the show alone.

The first three hours I am besieged by chronic legs cramps from Laguna Beach to Los Angeles County. I cannot figure out if I am just manifesting fear with my leg cramps or maybe I was unable to make this trip from Laguna Beach to Fort Bragg. Either way, I have to make a decision. I am not the child whose grandfather drove him everywhere. I am in the driver’s seat now. Stay with me grandfather, help me to face the fear in order to achieve my goal. My goal is honoring my dream of being an accomplished man, a sustainable artist who is willing to recycle materials of life and turn them into uplifting art. In order to achieve that goal, I have to be free emotionally, spiritually and physically and be willing to gamble on expanding my inner strength.

I decide to trust. In becoming a grown-up man-child who has the ability to live his gift, take the chance to take it on the road to lose the fear and drop the rocks which could hold me back. I have always had a fear of driving, especially long distances. I have to release my hidden fears because they have been weakening the power of my spirit for years. I have to move beyond the system of modern America which is layered in fear and invisible limitations.

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I made the decision at 5:00 am to make my own choices for my initiation journey, after taking in all the different routes offered by my many friends. I decided to take the Pacific Coast Highway all the way up the coast. I felt I had less of chance to get lost and I could have a more scenic view of the coastline. I would have time with myself to have honest conversation with myself and my bruised ego. I was glad as I was driving through Los Angeles in the early morning traffic, stop and go congestion. It matched the tightness in my chest and the ankles of my legs. And I stopped to stretch my legs, I parked and walked half a block passing a sidewalk camp of shopping carts, large white plastic bags filled with personal belongings swinging like piñatas.

The bags hung from different levels, helping to hide the people sleeping on the sidewalk below. I stop in front of my rental car and feel thankful. I am thankful for my friends waiting on the other end. I have a daughter who wished me well in my travels up the coast. She texted me about the time I was leaving. I think she thinks I am brave to be attempting to drive alone the long distance. And, I also have fears of driving as a black man. I will not let that be my mantra as I travel on the upcoming winding highway road. I am a loved and supported human being. I will not let the outside world define my being. I am proud of who I am, at this moment and I will hold on to that truth. The traffic moves slowly in the early Los Angeles morning and I thought of the love of my father, the way he held his love back. I forgive him and I understand him with more compassion. I understand the chains of fear.

Driving through Malibu, my heart opened up as I saw the seaside and the ocean air took my breath and I opened my lungs and released some of my fear. I would not allow my small frame body to make me any less of a man. I would not allow my fear of getting lost make me feel I am any less of a capable man. I would not allow my dream of having the beauty of this moment to be taken away from me. I want to breathe in peaceful breaths. I could feel the fear being released as I press the gas pedal. The highway and my heart open wide.

I stop in Santa Barbara for water and time to stretch my legs to control the leg cramps. I call two friends and tell them where I am and how beautifully the drive is unfolding. I sat in the car, drank water in silence, breathing deeply. I think of my friend who has lived in Santa Barbara with his wife and two kids. We had been in a band called ”Black Moses Supreme” in the 1990’s. I decide I would come back another time to visit, now that I have proved to myself I can drive the distance without fear. I have missed my friend, our friendship, and his creativeness. I have less than 200 miles to go until I reach San Francisco. I decide fear will no longer be a tool of separation.

As I approach San Francisco, I realize I am running out of gas and I need to stop and fill the car. All I could see for miles was farmland and no visible truck stops or towns. Finally, I see a rest stop filled with trucks and I pull off the highway and into the truck stop. As I get out of the car the wind blows the dust and my dreadlocks in all different directions. I stand still for a moment and stretch my leg and then head for the convenience store/paying station.

The two big boned men behind the counter crack jokes with me. I fill the tank and then go back inside to get my change. After I get my change and another funny story, I drive off into the dust bowl, head for San Francisco. My long hair and small frame does not define whether I am being a “real man.” A real man steps up to bite the bullet to step out of the state of fear to be proactive and compassionate in life. A “real man” knows his personal worth and lives it accordingly.

By the time I got to San Francisco, I figured I could finish making the trip with some personal assurance. The leg cramps have become a reminder to rub the driving leg, drink more water and release whatever remaining doubt within me. Any sense of failure was not in my mind. I was back in the city where I became an artist, A Man of Freedom. This was also a place where I was naive and bruised, but I am not broken. The times, the landscape and people have changed. This was the birth place of my becoming and it seems I have returned to be born again as a man. I see with clearer vision. I am an elder and not a boy.

As I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge I have a moment of panic which caused me to get off the freeway and I end up at 18th and Guerrero asking for directions to get to the Golden Gate Bridge. I am approaching the last legs of my journey. And in a fleeting moment, I realized I was in my old neighborhood of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, a time of coming back to change the echoes of the past. It is time to grow beyond the pain and trauma. Even though I had filled the gas tank earlier, I walk into the gas station and ask the man behind the counter for five dollars of gas and directions to the Golden Gate Bridge. He thrills me with his concise directions written from his i-Phone. I take the moment to be thankful and hold on the written notes on the blue window wiping towel. My pathway is clear again, but to be safe, I call my friend in Fort Bragg to get directions for the final leg of the journey.

Heading to Marin County, on to Santa Rosa, he talks me through the maze until I hit the 128, Cloverdale and Bonnville. By this time, it is 9:00 pm at night. I drive through the towering trees standing over me like umbrellas towering in the night. It seems like a black and white movie, car headlights going from high to low with each coming car.

I am living in an internal mantra of this is the road of life and I am travelling it with courage. I am travelling with the assurance I have the ability to make the right decisions and trust my feelings of safety. I can hold steady with every turn. I am focused and relaxed. I have my loved ones waiting for me. I remember the words of my friend waiting for me in Fort Bragg, how he complimented me on my accomplishment of making the journey alone. Love and not fear has been my personal guide. I am thankful for this breath, this time of birthing and grace. This is a minute in time which turns into winding turns, flashing lights and two hours of riding light. Then, I came into Mendocino and I then enter Fort Bragg.

And in this moment, I am free to laugh deeply within, take a breath to begin again. I have made the journey and there are no chains holding me. I feel like “I am the Man.”